HTC HD2 review – first with BlockBuster On Demand movies

Thumbs Up:

Gorgeous and gigantic 4.3-inch capacitive touch-screen; speedy 1GHz processor; 5-megapixel camera with dual flash and auto-focus; HTC Sense user interface.

Thumbs Down:

The smartphone is large and clunky. It uses Windows Mobile 6.5 operating system and not sure that it will be upgradeable to Windows Phone 7 series or not. The performance was less than that of its unlocked version due to maximum applications.

Inside the Trunk:

Technology: WCDMA (UMTS) / GSM

Band: Quad-band of WCDMA (UMTS) / GSM 850/900/1800/1900

Phone Design: Candy bar

Caller ID: Yes

Other Features: Microsoft Office Mobile, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, GPS, 5-megapixel camera

The Whiz Kid Speaks:

The HTC HD2 is powered with 1GHz snapdragon processor and Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.5 operating system. It has a micro-SD card slot that accepts up to 32GB.

4.3 inches capacitive touch-screen has 480×800 pixels WVGA resolution that features multi-touch, pinch-to-zoom, accelerometer, and proximity sensor. 5-megapixel camera features dual LED flash, video-recording, and auto-focus.

The additional features are Mobile blog, HSDPA, EDGE, GPRS, and Mobile-email. The preinstalled applications are Microsoft Office Mobile, Barnes & Noble e-reader, Windows Media Player Mobile, Internet Explorer 6 Mobile with Flash Lite, and Opera browser.

The connector set includes 1×3.5mm stereo headphone – mini-phone, and 1×USB. The HTC HD2 has 1230mAh lithium ion battery that has a life of 360 minutes talk time and 480 hours of idle standby time. The supported audio formats are WMA, MIDI, WAV, QCP, MP3, AMR, and AAC.

Accessories supplied inside the package are user manual, wired stereo headset, 16GB micro-SD card with preloaded “Transformers” and “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” movies, USB cable, and charger.

Razzle Dazzle:

The HTC HD2 is 4.74 inches tall, 2.64 inches wide, and 0.43 inch deep and weighs 5.54 ounces. The smartphone is not a pocket sized device and it is handful while holding in the hands. Its body is made up of the stainless steel and provides a soft-touch finish.

Inside Dope:

The HTC HD2 is now available through T-Mobile and features 1GHz Snapdragon processor, 5-megapixel camera, and 4.3 inches capacitive touch screen. Not only this, but the T-Mobile has also added a lot of applications that makes it awesome. The HD2 uses the Windows Mobile 6.5 OS, while the Window Phone 7 series has also been announced. So, does the HD2 will worth its price tag? Currently, the HTC HD2 costs $199.99 with two-year T-Mobile contract and you can also buy it for $449.99 with Even More Plus Plan that does not need any annual contract. According to us, the HTC HD2 will worth its cost by its great performance and high-end features. It is not sure that the HD2 will be upgradeable to the Windows Phone 7 or not.

4.3 inches capacitive touch-screen of the HTC HD2 has 480×800 pixels WVGA resolution. The display is enough sharp and vibrant to display the colorful images and text. It remains visible in most lighting environments. We appreciate the T-Mobile to add several applications to take the benefit of such a gigantic and gorgeous display. The touch-screen features inbuilt accelerometer to rotate the display on tilting the phone, proximity sensor to inactive the display during a call, multi-touch support, and pinch-to-zoom feature. In email, photos, browser, and other applications, the latter “pinch-to-zoom” feature allows zooming in and out with a tap on the screen

In addition, the virtual QWERTY keyboard also takes the advantage of large display. The keyboard rotates in both landscape and portrait mode on tilting the phone.  If you are habitual of working on physical QWERTY keyboard, then you can try this virtual keyboard. It is quite spacious and has large keys to provide better typing experience. What’s more – T-Mobile also provides a Swype keyboard with this default virtual one.T This Swype keyboard allows to drag the finger on keyboard from one letter to another instead of tapping each button individually. You can circle a key to input that letter twice. That’s why we think that it is quite amazing to work with the Swype keyboard. While testing, we were quite surprised with the speed and accuracy of this Swype keyboard.

The navigation array sits underneath the display and includes Talk key, Home button, Start Menu shortcut, back button, and End key. The volume rocker is located on the left side, whereas the micro-USB port and 3.5mm headset jack are on the bottom. The camera lens with flash sits on the back, while micro-SD card slot is behind the battery door.

The HTC HD2 is the first smartphone to support the BlockBuster On Demand – video download application that allows previewing and downloading movies on a mobile handset. After downloading, you can watch the movies on connected devices including PC via BlockBuster software, Blu-ray player, and TV.

The HTC HD2 smartphone also comes with a 16GB card preloaded with “Transformers” and “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” movies. Both of these movies are already optimized as per the display. You will also get 30-days trial of MobiTV that provides On-demand and Live television from channels including CBS Sports, ESPN, Comedy Central, NBC, and MTV. As usual, the Windows Media Player Mobile and YouTube app are also available. The Windows Media Player supports video codecs of 3GP, AVI, MPEG4, and WMV as well as music tracks of WMA, WAV, AAC, and MP3.

Need more – the HTC HTD2 comes with Barnes & Noble e-reader application with access to more than million magazines, newspapers, e-books and pre-downloaded content from Barnes & Noble account. This app turns pages as you swipe the finger on the screen. It provides better e-book reading experience than that on Apple iPhone.

5-megapixel camera of the HTC HD2 features auto-focus, dual LED flash, and video-recording. We captured some pictures and recorded few clips through the camera for testing. The overall picture and video quality was awesome. The colors looked brighter in the outdoor and remained good in the indoor shoots. The recorded video was good for a mobile camera.

The HTC HD2 urns on the Windows Mobile 6.5, whereas the better Windows Phone 7 Series has already been scheduled to launch in this holiday season. It is not sure that the HD2 smartphone will be upgradeable to the Windows Phone 7 or not. In contrast, the HTC Sense user interface performs a great job to make Windows Mobile 6.5 smoother and better. We hope that the HTC or T-Mobile will make some announcement for upgrading the HD2 with Windows Phone 7 Series operating system. However, you have to make decision whether or not to buy the HTC HD2 with dead-ending Windows Mobile 6.5.

The essential feature set of the HTC HD2 includes text and multimedia messages, conference calling, voice command, smart dialing, speed dial, a speakerphone, and quad-band world roaming. The contact page will show all the call & message history as well as social networking Web sites updates. You can directly call the recipient or the sender of an email or message with single tap on the onscreen phone icon. However, this feature is only available for the saved contacts. In similar way, you can make a conference call with multiple persons in email thread.

The additional highlights are Internet Explorer Mobile 6 with Flash Lite, Opera Web browser, integrated Wi-Fi, 3G support, Bluetooth and GPS with TeleNav Navigator for turn-by-turn directions. The extra applications are HTC Twitter application, Peep, six-months free of in-flight Wi-Fi courtesy of Gogo InFlight Internet, Activision’s Guitar, and Slacker Radio.

We made few calls through quad-band based the HTC HD2 via T-Mobile for testing. The overall call quality was only good. There was a bit muffling, crackling and background noise at our end, but we were still able to continue the conversation. The callers received good sound at their end without any problems. The speakerphone call quality was good with loud volume, but there was a bit voice distortion. We did not get any problem for pairing the Bluetooth headsets with the smartphone.

We also visited some Web sites on the browsers after connecting the HD2 with EDGE network. The Techsoft.org and GSMcellulars.com loaded in 5 and 10 seconds respectively in Opera browser; while a YouTube video buffered instantly in the Internet Explorer and played beautifully. The multi-touch and pinch-to-zoom support was useful while browsing the Web sites.

We played preloaded “Transformers: Revenge of Fallen” and it provided the rich watching experience. While playing some music tracks, the sound quality on the speakers was good. However, the sound quality was better on the included wired headset. The smartphone worked good to launch the applications. In contrast, the unlocked version of HTC HD2 delivered fast performance due to less number of applications. Still, the HTC HD2 for T-Mobile is one of the fastest Windows Mobile smartphones.

The battery life of the HTC HD2 is 6.3 hours of talk time and 20 days idle standby time. It’s digital SAR rating 1.09 watts per kg in accordance with FCC radiation tests.

Nitty Gritty:

The HTC HD2 provides a gigantic touch-screen, speedy processor for fast performance, and high-end features, but it uses Windows Mobile 6.5 and not sure that it will be upgradeable to the Windows Phone 7 Series.

Need a fast smartphone and can overcome above only one drawback; the HTC HD2 will be a great selection to purchase.

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